Access Status

Authors

Date

Collection

Type

Metadata

Abstract

This study investigates the quality (in terms of elevation accuracy and systematic errors) of three recent publicly available elevation model datasets over Australia: (i) the 9 arc second national GEODATA DEM-9S ver3 from Geoscience Australia and the Australian National University; (ii) the 3 arc second SRTM ver4.1 from CGIAR-CSI; and (iii) the 1 arc second ASTER-GDEM ver1 from NASA/METI. The main features of these datasets are reported from a geodetic point of view. Comparison at about 1 billion locations identifies artefacts (e.g. residual cloud patterns and stripe effects) in ASTER. For DEM-9S, the comparisons against the space-collected SRTM and ASTER models demonstrate that signal omission (due to the ~270 m spacing) may cause errors of the order of 100-200 m in some rugged areas of Australia. Based on a set of geodetic ground control points over Western Australia, the vertical accuracy of DEM-9S is ~9 m, SRTM ~6 m and ASTER ~15 m. However, these values vary as a function of the terrain type and shape. Thus, CGIAR-CSI SRTM ver4.1 may represent a viable alternative to DEM-9S for some applications. While ASTER GDEM has an unprecedented horizontal resolution of ~30 m, systematic errors present in this research-grade version of the ASTER GDEM ver1 will impede its immediate use for some applications.

Today, several global digital elevation models (DEMs) are freely available on the web. This study compares and evaluates the latest release of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission Reflectometer DEM (ASTER GDEM2) and ...

Determination of suitability of satellite-derived elevation data sets in terrain characterisation in a tropical region was carried out on the Sungai Patah subwatershed in the interior of Sarawak, East Malaysia. The goal ...

This study demonstrates that in mountainous areas the use of residual terrain model (RTM) data significantly improves the accuracy of vertical deflections obtained from high-degree spherical harmonicsynthesis. The new ...